Before writing a single line, clarify the input size. Is 10610 to the sixth power ? This tells you if an solution is acceptable or if you must aim for
Look for redundant work. Are you recalculating the same value? (Use Dynamic Programming ). Are you searching linearly? (Use Binary Search or a Hash Map ). 2. The Mental Toolkit (Pattern Recognition) Problem Solving in Data Structures & Algorithms...
Finding subarrays or substrings (e.g., "Longest substring without repeating characters"). Before writing a single line, clarify the input size
Always identify the "Brute Force" solution first. Even if it’s inefficient, it guarantees a baseline for correctness and helps you see where the bottlenecks are. Before writing a single line
— Donald Knuth
Finding the shortest path in an unweighted graph or tree level-order traversal.